Life Without Armour (9 page)

Bernard Clifford was also dissatisfied with his work and pay. By now I wanted to find a job elsewhere, but to do so one had to apply, under wartime regulations, to the Ministry of Labour office for a release form. Some boys had already filled them in, and had their applications to leave turned down. It all depended, Bernard told me, on the reasons you gave for wanting to go. There was space on the back of the form to state them, but the process was also helped if you could get the foreman to say, in the appropriate place on the form, that he was willing to let you go.

After organizing a virtual sit-down strike of myself and half a dozen others, the foreman felt more than able to do this. Taking up all the space allowed, I wrote several succinct sentences, in ink instead of pencil, and signed it. A fortnight later the chief penpusher must have pulled his finger out sufficiently to send a release certificate authorizing me to go my way, and thus ended my one and only stint at the Raleigh, the foreman as glad as I was that it had not lasted longer than ten weeks.

Whatever place I had gone to at the age of fourteen would not have tolerated me for long, and the Raleigh, having provided my baptism of fire in the industrial world, was a good preparation for accepting the fact that a living had to be earned, and that I had no right to expect that it would be easy.

Aware of my father's commendable maxim ‘no work, no food' (and he should know, I thought) I was re-employed almost immediately by A. B. Toone and Company. One factory was much like another, yet all were different in the goods they made and the individuals who worked there. Conditions seemed easier at Toone's, however, for the shift didn't start till eight o'clock, and ended at five, though I did the same number of hours because the place stayed open on Saturday morning.

About a hundred people were kept busy in a five-storey red-bricked mill which stood between two streets of small houses, manufacturing plywood for Mosquito bombers and invasion barges. My work at first was to stand at the end of a tablesaw in the Cellar Department and, when Sam England the operator trimmed off a board, pick up the strips and put them on to a pile. After sufficient pieces had accumulated I bundled, tied and carried them upstairs to be taken away on a lorry at the end of the day.

I missed the cash-register excitement of piece work, when every hundred done meant pence and shillings in my pocket. For the moment work was slower, and I almost slept on my feet, soon getting used to the whine-scream of handsaws and the juddering of sanding machines, and the air that was thick with the finest sawdust and motes of baked glue even though extractor fans contributed to the noise by driving some of it into the street. On my way home an occasional gob of orange spit flashed into the gutter. I wouldn't wear a cap to prevent dust thickening my hair, unwilling to assume the badge of a workman settled in for life. A cursory wash every day in the scullery had to suffice until total immersion in hot water at the public baths on Saturday afternoon.

The factory was one of thousands all over the country kept going by women and girls, youths like myself, and men above military or retirement age. A bonus system helped output to reach its maximum, and we carefully watched the charts pinned to the office door. My next job was bringing half-inch boards six feet by three from the presses on the floor above into the cellar for the finishing processes. The edges were still ragged with protruding veneers, but I soon became skilled at getting out splinters and then, with care, avoiding most.

Two boards at a time were carried to start with, adding gradually till I could hold five or six. This number was not an obligation, but I took pride in testing and increasing my strength. Some of the workers in the cellar were women and girls, and I fell in love with one or two, unknown to them, as they sat chatting and laughing around a large table – taping, filling and scraping the boards to perfection.

In keeping the cellar tidy and provisioned with work I was the assistant to Bill Towle, who was two years older, though we had known each other in the district for years. As children we once went rambling over the Bramcote Hills with a couple of his father's old pipe bowls, filling them with tobacco from nub-ends picked off the street. The smoking was enjoyable, but not the sickness that followed soon after.

In tea-break and dinner hour (I brought something to eat from home, for there was no canteen) Bill insisted on teaching me unarmed combat, in which he was certainly an expert: what to do when attacked with a knife (he used a real one), how to break out of a half-nelson (calling for speed, agility and cultivated aggression), the trick of throwing someone who aimed a kick at you (he wore heavy boots), tackling an uprising fist (his was particularly meaty).

Strong and adept, he slung me all over the boards, until my quick reactions got the better of him from time to time. His father had marked him down for the Royal Navy, and Bill already had a sailor's way with women and girls, as well as an inexhaustible warehouse of the filthiest jokes imaginable, not to mention a staggering capacity for booze. Because of his physique, and perhaps abilities, he had become a part-time soldier in the local Home Guard company, and said he would take me with him to their church hall headquarters so that I could enrol as well.

To say there was something unsatisfactory about my life at that time would be correct, but only to the extent that it was not full enough. I had plenty of friends, took a girl out now and again, did a certain amount of reading, and was as much interested at the goings on in Russia and the geography of the battlefields as in the system which the Germans were trying to break. Arguing for what seemed the human fairness of such a social regime gained little agreement from my workmates, though they didn't think me a complete fool either, since we talked about other topics with a marvellous sense of humour, often bickering in the most basic terms as to whether jazz, which they liked and I did not particularly, was better than all other music.

The captain of the Home Guard unit looked at my five feet six inches of height, which needed another year or so to attain the final three. ‘You're too young at fourteen,' he smiled. ‘Either come back at sixteen, or go into the Army Cadet Force.'

As it happened, I joined the Air Training Corps, having read something about it in the newspaper.

Chapter Thirteen

I walked into the hall of a school on the evening of 1 October 1942, with Arthur Shelton and a few other youths, to enrol in the Air Training Corps. Flying-Officer Pink, the squadron adjutant, told the warrant officer to put us in line with other potential recruits so that he could see what raw material had come into his orbit. I didn't think he had been so close to anyone from a factory before, most members of the ATC being either at grammar school or working in shops and offices.

Flight-Lieutenant Hales, the commanding officer, later recalled that I wore a bit of old bootlace for a tie, and looked like someone who had climbed out of a barrel of shoe polish. This sounds exaggerated, though there could be some truth in the picture, because I worked in the same shirt for a week, a clean one not being put on till after the Saturday bath. Deodorant was non-existent, and we managed with strong wartime soap.

Mr Pink was short, somewhat rotund and, when without his cap, seen to be thoroughly bald. After asking our names and ages he demanded those of us to put up a hand who did not brush their teeth. I had to signal this admission, which I did without embarrassment, never having considered my mouth to need that kind of attention.

‘All right,' he said, ‘I'm going to put you recruits on probation for a month, to see how you behave. If everything goes well you will be given a uniform, and then you'll be able to write the word
cadet
before your name, but don't forget that, in the meantime, if you want to belong to 209 Squadron, which is second to none, let me tell you, you will clean your teeth morning and evening! Is that understood?'

It was, and a toothbrush and tube of toothpaste were paid for out of my next week's spending money. The only thing I didn't like about his otherwise sensible speech was that he put me, among others, on probation, and had not accepted me immediately as being the finest possible acquisition.

My limbs were so unco-ordinated that for a while I had difficulty in marching correctly, but the drill soon taught me how to move, and my aspect smartened quite a lot. Lectures were given twice a week for a couple of hours in the evening, with an optional assembly on Saturday afternoon, which I went to, and instruction also on Sunday morning, ending with a grand review of all 400 cadets of the two West Nottingham squadrons. The only attendance I disliked was that for the monthly church parade.

On each ordinary occasion, however, I made sure that the uniform trousers were pressed to a sharp edge, and my shoes well polished. I would hurry home from the factory, have tea, a good wash, get into uniform, then quick walk a mile to the school. On Saturday afternoon, and again on Sunday morning, it was a round four miles to different buildings, and because buses were infrequent and often full, or stopped running by nine in the evening, I never used them, knowing in any case all the short-cuts of the area.

My knowledge of maps decided that I would train to be a navigator, and many hours were spent studying at home. There were classes in subsidiary subjects, and Arthur Shelton, who was clever with anything electrical (and chemical: we once tried to make gunpowder) wired up morse keys and buzzers, so that we practised until we could take and receive faster than anyone else in the squadron. We also improved our English, and learned mathematics, the principles of flight, aircraft recognition, engine theory, meteorology, navigation, RAF law and administration, health and hygiene, and anti-gas regulations – the Initial Training Syllabus for aircrew, in fact – our teachers being business and professional men who gave their time free. The reckoning of the day changed its character when calculated from midnight to midnight, all navigational problems and squadron orders being based on the twenty-four-hour system.

At annual camp we were attached to an aerodrome for a week, and the RAF looked after us. The first place was at Syerston, too near Nottingham for my liking, where we slept twelve to a bell tent and it rained most of the time, but we were given demonstrations of parachute packing, took a turn on the Link Trainer, and were shown the rudiments of air-traffic control.

Going by rail to our second camp, my first train journey as a grown-up, I followed the route through Lincolnshire with my National Road Atlas, noting every lane, bridge or stream, to the amusement but, possibly to the satisfaction also, of Mr Pink who accompanied us. This time we slept in Nissen huts, and on the range fired twenty rounds each from Short Lee Enfield rifles, which left me with an aching shoulder. Strangely enough, though always left-handed, I picked up a rifle and used it in the normal right-handed way. We were also instructed in infantry tactics and street fighting, creating mayhem among the blocks of the married quarters with blanks and thunderflashes.

In less than a year from joining I had gained the Proficiency Certificate Part One, but was too young to be given either the paper or the badge, for no one was expected to pass under the age of sixteen. The only part of the test which I had to take twice was drill, but I received high marks for English, mathematics and navigation, and the absolute top for signals. When Flying-Officer Wibberley, who ran a motor haulage firm, asked what he could give me as a reward for my success, I asked for a copy of
The Complete Air Navigator
by D.C.T. Bennett, the bombing raid pathfinder of the timer. This book, generously supplied at the cost of fifteen shillings, joined my much-read library, and from it I learned, among other things, the Greek alphabet, also noting the motto at the beginning: ‘Eternal vigilance is the price of safety.'

My father disliked me putting on a uniform but hadn't been able to do anything about it. His permission was needed before I could go flying, however, and this he was reluctant to give, because he was genuinely afraid for me, considering the aeroplane to be a dangerous kind of transport. There had been cases, though he couldn't have known about them, of cadets being killed in accidents, or in planes shot down by German nightfighters roaming the sky above training airfields. I forget whether it was his signature I obtained (something he was normally glad to give, in order to show he wasn't totally illiterate) or my mother's, since I was quite capable of forging either, but a group of us were taken by bus to RAF Newton, seven miles from Nottingham, to go up for the first time.

In a hangar smelling of peardrops, or ‘dope' as we called it, we were given a parachute, told which handle to pull if we had to jump out of the plane, and sent to wait our turn outside the flight hut. The parachutes banged against our behinds as we walked across the grass and hauled ourselves on board the De Havilland Dominie, a twin-engined biplane of plywood construction, with seating for a pilot and ten passengers.

The Polish pilot taxied to the edge of the field for take-off, put the nose into the wind after a long slow rumble over the grass, then increased speed until the fixed undercarriage parted from the earth. Such a moment of truth could not have been more spectacular. At a couple of hundred feet, as the aircraft gently turned, or ‘banked' as we had learned to say, the first blue elbow of the Trent came into view. Fear of air-sickness was forgotten at the sight of familiar landmarks between the Fosse Way, straight as a Roman ruler, and the Derbyshire foothills fading into the green haze.

Smoke from the marshalling yards and factories lay south of the city but, immediately to port and starboard, visibility was good enough to distinguish churches and park spaces, streets and railway lines, the castle squat on its sandstone rock and Wollaton Hall among the greensward, as well as old hideouts and well-run routes that up to a few minutes ago had seemed so far apart but that now in one exposing vista made as small and close a pattern as that on a piece of lace. From 1,000 feet the hills appeared flat and lost significance, but the secrets of the streets covering them were shown so that no map could have done the job better, doubly enthralling because I hadn't seen a street plan of Nottingham which, with the one-inch Ordnance Survey maps, were not sold to the public during the war.